The subject matter disclosed herein relates to the estimation and localization of anatomical structures within a volume of interest.
Non-invasive imaging technologies allow images of the internal structures or features of a patient to be obtained without performing an invasive procedure on the patient. In particular, such non-invasive imaging technologies rely on various physical principles (such as the differential transmission of X-rays through the target volume, the reflection of acoustic waves within the volume, the paramagnetic properties of different tissues and materials within the volume) to acquire data and to construct images or otherwise represent the observed internal features of the patient.
With respect to such non-invasive imaging technologies, numerous medical image processing workflows rely on fast two-dimensional (2D) scans to identify target regions of interest for accurate scanner set-up and planning. Manually identifying regions of interest can be time consuming, hard to reproduce and is prone to operator error. Further, these localizer scans are typically two-dimensional projections of three-dimensional data and, as such, may have lower image detail due to overlapping tissue.